Occupational and Internal Labor Markets in Japan

The distinction between internal and occupational labor markets requires the development of informative indicators that go beyond standard measures such as firm size, which are too vague. This article develops an alternative measure, based on the comparison between firm-specific and occupation-specific tenure, and applies it to Japanese occupational data. We believe that the proposed measure is useful not only in classifying different occupations according to the degree of labor market internalization but also in documenting changes over time in job definition, "reengineering" of the corporation, and the like.     

Internal Labor Markets and Worker Quits

This article uses establishment-level data to explore the impact of internal labor markets on worker quits. Quits are lower where job ladders are long, pay growth from the bottom to the top of job ladders is high, and seniority is used as a criterion for promotion. Using a system of internal promotion without a commitment to seniority is associated with higher worker quits. These results hold true even when controlling for the specific human capital skills of workers, suggesting that personnel factors other than specific training are responsible both for the existence of internal labor markets and for the impact of internal labor markets on worker quits.     

Direct Labor Market Effects of Unemployment Insurance

It has been established that relatively high income families receive a disproportionately large share of UI benefits. Little information on the distribution of costs by income class is available, but it is quite possible that the upper income groups may also bear a disproportionately large share of the costs. More empirical research is needed before the redistributive effects of UI can be known with any degree of confidence. There is little argument about the desirability on income mainlenance grounds of extending Unemployment insurance benefits in a recessionary period, all other things being equal. U1 is quite efficient as an income maintenance tool for covered workers. With respect to the unemployment problem, though, it is feared by some that the program goes too far in maintaining the incomes of covered workers, and as a result any extension of UI benefits will aggravate the unemployment problem. The evidence presented here suggests that fears of a major increase in unemployment as a result of such changes are largely unwarranted. However, extended UI benefits would appear to have some small, nontrivial adverse impact on unemployment. Finally, it seems that UI's income distributional impact has been portrayed unjustly as pro-rich. It may be that income is transferred through the UI system from the relatively well-to-do to the relatively poor. There is no scientific way of bringing these considerations to bear in deciding whether or not to restructure the unemployment insurance system. This question can be answered only by invoking fundamental value judgments to decide how sociely would be better off, and I would not presume here to offer my own. This paper will have served its purpose if it has provided the basis for a more informed decision.     

中国区域产业结构趋同的研究综述

20世纪80年代以来,学术界对我国区域产业结构趋同问题进行了细致深入的研究。本文从产业结构趋同的内涵、测度、形成原因以及合意性与非合意性等方面对现有文献进行了梳理和总结,并对该领域的未来研究方向进行了展望。     

Household Behavior with Imperfect Labor Markets

A household model with differential asset endowments and idiosyncratic transactions costs in accessing labor markets is developed to (1) explain membership of farm households to alternative labor regimes (sellers, employers, or self-sufficient in labor), (2) test for recursivity between production and consumption decisions selectively by labor regime, and (3) identify the determinants of differential labor productivity across labor regimes. The model is applied to a 1994 household survey of the Mexican land reform sector.     

Gender and Job Search in Developing Country Labor Markets

Gender discrimination in developing country labor markets raises the concern that women may be unable to find alternative employment following public-sector job loss. Theoretical and empirical results in this article suggest that, in segmented labor markets, observed unemployment spells may actually be shorter for women than for men. This is a result of the relatively strong incentive wage-sector discrimination creates for women to accept more readily available, but less-remunerative, nonwage-sector positions.     

The Economics of Internal Labor Markets

Our essay focuses on the economics of long-term contractual relationships between a firm and its employees, referred to as the internal labor market. We review the economics literature on match-specific investments, risk aversion, asymmetric information, and transaction costs. We argue that an integrated treatment of all four factors is needed in order to apply implicit contract theoy to internal labor markets. Integrating the topics also highlights the tradeoffs created among these factors. Our discussion stresses contract enforcement mechanisms, including self-enforcing contracts and third-party enforcement.     

LDC Labor Markets: Applications of Internal Labor Market Theory

This article does not attempt, nor has it delivered, a complete theory for the labor market in Egypt, let alone for LDC labor markets in general. The macro-model developed here serves mainly to demonstrate the diaculties involved in formulating macro-theories for LDC labor markets that, while necessarily simple, can still claim realism when confronted with certain fundamental “stylized h t s. Our considerations have, moreover, been limited to LDCs with mixed economies, using Egypt as the example. Hence, large-scale modern industry was assumed to belong to the public sector which then emerges as the country dominant, nonagricultural employer. Agriculture is the second large and relatively homogeneous sector, in Egypt dominated by small holdings. In-between we find the private, nonagricultural sector, overwhelmingly dominated by small-scale enterprises with large numbers of the self-employed, and with trade as the most important single activity. Labor is (in Egypt) generally unorganized or enrolled in government-controlled unions, active mainly in the public sector and without much real say in matters of wages and salaries. It is in this specific institutional setting that I have tried to discuss the application of internal labor market theory. This theory has, to the best of my understanding, nothing to offer by way of explaining public sector behavior (which is of crucial importance for wage and employment formation in a mixed economy). However, adapted to the circumstances, internal labor market theory goes a long way toward explaining wages and employment in agriculture and the “informal” small-scale sector. Our considerations, tentative though they are, do not point to any single, dominant labor market mechanism that could form the basis for a simple macro-theory. Wage flexibility differs greatly between sectors, overstaEng may be a more important phenomenon than unemployment in some activities, and unemployment may be of both the voluntary and involuntary variety, with withdrawals from the labor market related to well-defined reserve wages, and open unemployment related to internal labor market behavior. These considerations are based more on loose impressions than on solid facts. Further theorizing may be needed, but the development of labor market theory for LDCs has undoubtedly reached a point where progress depends critically upon painstaking empirical studies of basic labor market institutions such as employment and wage forms and responses, bargaining procedures, and conditions of both labor and output markets for small private enterprises in particular countries. Considerable work has been done in India but even here much remains for investigation. Studies of specific countries may, even for LDCs in rapid, turbulent transformation, disclose ongoing changes in institutions that for a full understanding of the labor market may be more important than the institutions themselves. Existing wage theory has little to offer for the analysis of such institutional change, but something may be learned from the American institutional school in labor economics whose leading exponent we are paying homage to with these papers.     

Privatization, Markets and Industrial Relations in China

Within a context of gradual privatization and rapid marketization in China, this paper draws on detailed research of the perceived impact these have had on the work, status and attitudes of different industrial relations 'actors' within seven enterprises in Guangdong and Shanghai in 1998–9. It will be shown that the main pressure for tightening control over the workplace has come from the development of markets and that privatization has had important but limited catalytic effect in this process. Considerable internal and external constraints restrict the impact of privatization, which stem from China's continued ambivalence towards capitalist market relations.     

Structure and Profitability in Banking Markets

We use the structure-performance model and regression analysis to investigate a number of analytical issues that often arise in evaluating competition in connection with bank mergers and that are generally relevant to mergers in other industries. Perhaps our most consistent and strongest finding is that the local market HHI is positively and significantly related to profitability. We also find that the number of organizations and the level of recent deposit growth may provide some additional information on the level of competition. Finally, several variables including market size, the number of large banking firms, deposits per office, and resident migration rates exhibit similar relationships to profitability in the bivariate analysis, suggesting that there may be some characteristic associated with market size, density, or attractiveness that is important for competition.     

基于复杂网络理论的区域产业结构网络模型研究

本文从复杂网络的理论出发,通过投入产出理论建立起反映区域产业结构演化的复杂网络模型,并借用度分布、权分布和网络路径长度等概念对产业结构网络拓扑结构进行分析,为下一步深入研究该网络统计特性和演化机制以及这些机制对产业组织产生的影响奠定基础。     

地区产业结构差异对江苏经济增长的影响

本文选取了江苏省13个地级市2000～2008年的面板数据,按苏南、苏中、苏北的区域划分方法,利用偏离——前额法研究了地区产业结构对江苏省经济增长的影响情况.结果表明:苏南城市群地区产业结构具有相对优势,对经济增长偏离有积极贡献;而苏中和苏北城市群地区产业结构都具有一定劣势,对经济增长偏离有迟滞效应.本文在此研究的基础上提出相应对策建议.